


The Parable of The Lamb (2:18)

by zombified_queer



Category: Hellraiser (Movies)
Genre: Body Horror, Bondage, Cenobite-typical violence and weirdness, Dehumanization, Dom/sub, Ero Guro, F/M, M/M, Master/Slave, Mutilation, Overstimulation, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sadomasochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 15:45:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15198047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombified_queer/pseuds/zombified_queer
Summary: And thus The Lamb passed into the deathless realm to become one of the devout of sensation, killing his old flesh to be rebuilt in new skin.





	The Parable of The Lamb (2:18)

When he awakes, he is naked. Larry tries to cover himself, preserve some sense of modesty.   
All around him are the shadows and the chains, the latter rattling quietly but insistently. A single footstep, cloaked in the darkness, has him jump, startled enough to forget modesty.  
When _they_ step out of the shadows, they are four: the Pinfaced One, the Open-Throated Woman, the Chatterer of Bone, and the Glutton of Bile.   
"Another lamb to our fold," says the Pinfaced One.   
"To the slaughter," the Open-Throated Woman to Larry's right answers.  
The Chatterer of Bone's teeth clack rhythmically. _How modest the prey is._  
"The more modest and tender, the better the flavour," the Glutton of Bile adds.   
They all look at Larry hungrily, as if anticipating the taste of his skin. He shakes his head. "This can't be happening."  
"It is very much happening," the Open-Throated Woman says.  
"You will learn to bear it," the Pinfaced One assures Larry. "As we all have born this burden and learned to enjoy its weight."  
"You will take him, then?" the Glutton asks the Pinfaced One. "As always?"  
"As always, I will educate him in our ways," the Pinfaced One answers. "He is not our quarry, not properly our hunt, but he has still come to our fold."  
"Educate him well," the Open-Throated Woman says. "We remember the last of our lambs."  
A sadness seems to pass through the Four, a recollection bittersweet. The Chatterer's clacking seems almost elegeic in Larry's mind.  
"Come, lamb," the Pinfaced One says. "The time for your education has come."  
Larry, reluctantly, follows this demon into the shadows, practically clinging to the black leather of the cenobite's vestments.

* * *

The first part of the education is rigorous and Larry hardly ever thinks he'll survive until it's over and he's made to curl up in a cage for what passes as a night in this hellscape, all his limbs deadened by the time the Pinfaced One returns with his implements.  
He is made to endure as the Pinfaced One draws a ritual blade over his palm. The sight of blood makes Larry afraid, queasy as if he might vomit, but the cenobite holds him tight, forces him to face the fear. The blood overpowers the sickly-sweet vanilla-and-ash of the cenobite, metal thick in the air so that Larry can taste it.  
He finds he does not fear.  
Larry brings the hand to his mouth, licking at the wound experimentally. Metal overwhelms his senses.   
"Good boy," the cenobite praises. "To eroticize the fear is to embrace it, allow yourself not to be mastered by it. Do you understand?"  
"I do."  
"Good boy," the Pinfaced One says. "That concludes today."

* * *

The blindfold—fashioned from black leather and chafing wherever it touches—becomes the next lesson. Without his eyes, there is only sensation and the hopeless trust Larry puts into his educator, the Pinfaced One.  
Larry stays on his knees for what feels like forever. There is no time here. Wounds that should take months to heal close over in seconds and yet seconds stretch on for years. His hands are balled into fists in his lap, resisting the urge to cover himself. He has not been given clothes still and modesty earns Larry thirty lashes with the bullwhip. For now, his flesh is on complete display for flagellation and embracing in equal measure.   
He stays on his knees until the cold stone under him bruises, until his limbs begin to deaden. His legs are full of pins and needles and even to breath irritates the dull sensation into a brilliant flare of agony.  
Buried deep within that torture is a small glimmer of pleasure.   
"You've become aroused, Lamb."  
Larry raises his head, acknowledging his teacher.  
"Obedient Lamb," the Pinfaced One says. "But when will the Lamb learn to stand on his own? To take control of his own?"  
"Why lamb?" Larry asks.   
"For your newness," the Pinfaced One says. His hands are bitingly cold as they caress Larry's head from behind the human. "For your white coat and unmarred palette."  
"I'm not innocent," Larry insists.  
"Then show us, Lamb, how mature you are."  
The hands are gone, but there's no warmth to replace them, only the absence of cold. Larry struggles to make his legs so much as twitch, chasing those cold hands and their embrace that borders on loving. He only manages to fall over, sprawling with dead limbs on the cold stone.  
"You are weak as the newly born," the Pinfaced One says. One of his sharp heels digs into Larry's left palm. "We will raise you to withstand living. Truly living."  
"Make it stop," Larry begs. "It hurts."  
"You have only begun to know pain, Lamb."  
He hears his hand break before he feels it, the sharp stinging under the pins and needs. It hits Larry hard and fast, bringing him to screaming, the bone mended before his lungs are empty.  
"You will know pain. You will know pleasure. You will be craftsman of both."  
"I never asked for this."  
"No one ever does."   
Those cold hands are back, soothing before the cenobite takes hold of Larry's hair, pulling on his curls, dragging him along the stone, rawing his flesh.   
He's forced into a cage, curled into a fetal position on his knees. The wire is cold as it bites into his skin, bruising and healing back and forth for minutes.   
"This is how you will rest. As if locked in the womb again."  
"It hurts."  
"Learn pain, then. Know it well, Lamb. Sleep."

* * *

Through the cage, he is subjected to electricity, crackling over his skin, forcing his muscles to contract painfully. His muscles spasm for ages and aeons and hours after that. He feels his skin blister, hears it crack as the electricity burns him. Though pus seeps out of his sores, Larry feels everything mend itself back into place, flesh knit to flesh, muscles soothed as soon as they tense painfully.   
He's given a moment to compose himself. He's weeping around the blindfold, his tears salty in his mouth.  
"Please," he begs.  
"You have only begun to know pain," the Pinfaced One says. He sounds far off, as if merely watching and not inflicting the torture. For all Larry knows, it might be the others torturing while his teacher watches. "You cannot only begin a lesson and cry when it becomes difficult. Continue."  
"It's too much."  
"We all endure the breaking point to be born again. You want to live, do you not?"  
"I do."  
"Then you will endure."  
The electricity is replaced by fire. He is doused in areas, burned alive until he thinks he might die only for every wound to heal over. Other times symbols are painted in a cool but flammable paste or jelly, set alight for the symbols to burn into his skin, erased when his flesh is undone.   
He is branded once. The mark is high on his thigh, the outside. He struggles against the cage, his blindfold, even his own skin just to escape the pain.  
The brand does not heal. It is the first rite and, thus far, Larry has passed. He is claimed as the Pinfaced One's apprentice.   
After the burning comes blades, needles, whips, electricity again, acid, ice. The whole of Larry's cage is submerged in water once and he finds he cums harder when he can't breathe. Sometimes the methods are solitary, sometimes they are combined. It's always a variety, never letting him adapt to anything but the extremes to which he is pushed.

* * *

Now it is time for celebrating. The Pinfaced One has made his decree and those chilling fingers trace along the edge of the blindfold.   
"I will free your sight," he tells the human. "We will subject you to more."  
Larry nods, almost imperceptibly, trying not to move too much.   
The buckle of the blindfold rattles and the leather is pulled taut before it falls into Larry's lap, covering him. He swats it away by instinct.  
When he looks up, the sight of his teacher and tormentor is terribly handsome. The white face's features are sharp, the pins in his skin at such equal distances that Larry finds himself weeping all over again.  
"You cry at your liberation?"  
"You're handsome," Larry says, embarrassed about his outburst. "I'm sorry."  
"You have found something aesthetically pleasing," the Pinfaced One answers. "There is no need for shame. Never shame, Lamb."  
"May I make a request?"  
"Anything, Lamb."  
"I . . . want you."  
The Pinfaced One takes Larry's hair in a firm hold, pulling his head back, forcing the eye contact. He studies the human for a long time. "You have been subjected to the first course of heavenly delights and yet you ask for such human pleasures?"  
Larry shrinks from the cenobite's gaze. He feels shame again, the shame of wanting something so simple—a cold-cut sandwich when caviar is offered to him, fresh and savoury.  
"Do not be modest, Lamb," the Pinfaced One assures him. "If that is what you wish, you will be granted a reward for your endurance."  
Larry nods as much as he's allowed in the cenobite's grasp.   
"What is your desire, Lamb?"  
Larry turns red at the thoughts that come to mind—thoughts of servicing the cenobite orally or being bent over and taken. His lips part, but the words are stuck in his throat.  
"So that is what you desire?" the Pinfaced One asks. He releases his grasp on Larry's hair, cool hands cupping Larry's face, reliving the burn of shame. "You need only ask, Lamb. I will provide."  
"Please." The word comes quick and fast, flying out of his mouth. "Please!"  
"You have found your voice."  
The Pinfaced One's hands leave Larry's face, offering him a hand. He is being allowed to stand.   
The hand is ice-cold but he takes it without a second thought. The cenobite barely twitches to raise Larry to stand, holding him carefully, guiding his numbed legs into walking.   
And there is the bench. It is rough-hewn stone, a place for tools to be laid out, but there are shackles bolted to it's surface. Larry's left wrist is guided to the metal—white-hot that makes him hiss for a moment—locked in with a series of complex latches.   
The cenobite guides Larry into a position bent over the bench, locking his right wrist into another burning shackle. Larry presses against the stone, trying to ignore the war of sensations over his flesh, though it becomes impossible to drown out.  
He gasps, and sharply.  
"You are learning to find pleasure in sensation."  
"Yes," Larry says, trying to swallow back the shame at his lack of control.  
"You will know the limits and surpass them into absolute bliss."  
"I trust you."  
The initial penetration is rough, but not entirely unbearable. Larry has been flayed to the bone and doused in acid. This minor soreness is nothing. The cold shocks him more, always the cold.   
There is length, much of it, and it continues on and on into the human, filling him past the point of comfort and into the realm of pain. He wishes he had his hands to feel the way his abdomen distends, stretched by so much.  
It's thrilling. He almost climaxes from just that.  
But there's anticipation coursing under his skin. He anticipates more. Thrusts or friction or something.  
Instead, there's only the chill, the burn, and the fill.  
"The Lamb demands." It comes across as a breath against Larry's neck, warm for once.   
"More."  
"More? You are learning, Lamb. Becoming one of us."  
And then the sensation of being full recedes like a tide, only to be filled again. It comes in waves, the high tide battering him internally to the point Larry is almost certain he should be dead and yet it continues.  
He continues.   
He can feel every sensation—pain and pleasure both, full and empty both, heat and cold both—and he continues to breathe, to groan, to struggle against his bonds to grasp something.  
When he cums, it's hard enough to tense his whole body, blacking out for a moment.  
He comes to in the arms of his educator, the Pinfaced One's pride hidden under layers of cold. Larry is clean, comforted.   
"You have graduated," the cenobite informs him.  
Larry finds it hard to move, sluggish with his reward.   
The cenobite understands. He even smiles.   
The leather against Larry's throat is loose enough to allow him to breathe, but he is still to be trained like a dog. The chain is heavy and he finds he does not want to fight against it, strain against his bonds under his throat is rubbed raw into bleeding and he chain groans. Instead, he is content to lay on his side, collared and chained to the ground.   
The Pinfaced One smiles. He leaves his student to sleep.

* * *

The new set of trials exhausts him in every capacity. There is pain and pleasure and sensation, but it is taken to such extremes he often screams until he has no energy left, blacking out only to awaken to a new challenge.  
The Open-Throated Woman makes her frequent visits. She is a silent voyeur, a second overseer to the human's education. She never smiles. She rarely speaks. She watches and she notes.   
"The true test will be to satisfy her," the Pinfaced One tells his student, petting him gingerly. "Only once you can apply the teachings I have granted you will you be properly one of us."  
The human nods. He understands.   
He is becoming one of them.  
His skin has turned the same ashen shade as that of his educator, a small amount of humanity lost. But he does not cry for it. It would not complete him like these trials have.  
"I understand," he says softly.   
"Then you will do well, Lamb, and become one of us."  
He nods. He craves this next step to his graduating as a full-fledged member of the cenobites. It is a rare and near-divine honour to be born one of them.   
"She has the largest appetite of us all, Lamb. Do not underestimate her quietness for weakness."  
"Of course."  
With a wave of his hand, the Pinfaced One drops the chains from his student's collar. The cenobite seems quieter, more pensive, bordering on regret. He reaches a hand down, helping the human to stand with that same inhuman strength he uses in every bit of guidance and education.  
The human, still unused to being bipedal, stumbles as the numbness recedes from his legs. He clings to his educator, staggering along as best he can.  
"I believe in you, Lamb."  
"You taught me well."  
The Pinfaced One smiles.

* * *

Her sphere is entirely different from the single cold room the human is used to. Instead of a single dark room of rough concrete and chains, her realm is warm, humid. Everything is red and red and red. The room is crimson from ceiling to floor, even the ceiling and the floor are crimson. The only variance are the black candles with their red flames. They rest on candlesticks, lighting the room.  
And though it is such a well-lit room, he cannot find her, not right away.  
She steps through the red mist that hangs heavy in her quarters, her black vestments and ashen skin a wonderful variance for his eyes.   
The Open-Throated Woman regards him coldly, as if he is an insect trespassing on her domain.   
He stares, with respect, at her wound, the stigmata she carries along her throat.  
"I wish to serve," says he.  
She replies, "You are ordered to."  
"I wish only to please," says he, kneeling before her.  
She answers, "And to be pleased in turn."  
"To serve is pleasure."  
She stares at him, regards him with a touch less disgust.  
"I am at your disposal," says he. "To be used as you see fit."  
"I will abuse you."  
"I expect nothing less."  
"You talk like him." She takes up a bit, forcing it between the human's jaws. The bit is fastened tight, biting into his skin enough to draw blood. "I will not tolerate it."  
And while she regards him with her aloof glare, the human knows she has accepted his service.  
He is put to work under her watch. Strapped down and having hot wax applied to the point of injury over his most sensitive places, along nerves and flesh. He makes no noise, knowing her sphere is silence and silence is law.  
She whips him, the rope holding shards of glass, sharpened obsidian, barbed wire. And, even when the whip wraps around him, doing more injury than any human should withstand, he does not cry out.  
She becomes frustrated and delighted in equal measure. She pushes, taking blades to his skin, delighting in carving his back until his flesh is as red as her domain.   
"What do you desire?" she asks him. "Flesh yearns, wants, hungers."  
"To serve," he says around the bit, the words muffled and his jaw sore.   
"Then serve you will."  
The wounds she inflicts should kill him. She burns him terribly, carves him like a butcher would a cow, pours acid over him. She takes his hand, her tongue lapping at the exposed bone at his wrist.   
It sends a shiver through him.  
But she continues her assault on him until she pants, eyes wide as she watches him. She appreciates his stoicism, the service he provides. She delights in sadism with an equal partner.  
"You are . . . satisfactory."  
The human nods.   
"He has taught you well."  
He bows his head in respect.  
"Tell him you have deserved ornaments for your service."  
The human nods again.  
With a snap, the bit falls away, disappearing into the red mist before it can hit the floor. She takes her leave with a turn that makes her vestments flow with the motion, retreating into the red of her domain.  
He does not rise right away. He stays on his knees, out of respect and reverence. Only when she does not return for an aeon does he rise, leaving her sphere.

* * *

"You have succeeded. She sings your praises, Lamb."   
"She advised ornamentation," the human answers. He's been placed, much like a child, on the bench.   
"She did."  
His educator regards him warmly, the fainted smile one the Pinfaced One's face. He runs a hand over the human's torso, searching for the perfect spot. Those cold fingers close around the human's nipple, making his gasp.   
"I think here is the proper place for your adornments."  
"Yes."  
He hears the jingle of metal on metal before he feels the prick. It's a sharp sensation, metal forced through skin. The ring is locked, the human panting softly. Gold catches the dim lights of his educator's sphere, glinting against ashen skin.   
The second ring goes through just as easily, another sharp gasp drawn from the pupil's lips.   
"You have absorbed the teachings, Lamb," the Pinfaced One says. "The time to ascend to your proper place is at hand."  
"I anticipate it."  
The Pinfaced One laughs. "She was right."  
"Hmm?"  
"You've begun to sound like me."  
"All children sound like their parents."  
"It is not so much parenting," the Pinfaced One says, choosing words carefully, "as it is guiding. Mentoring rather than mothering."  
The human nods in understanding. "There's something, isn't there?"  
"You must be shorn, Lamb," the Pinfaced One says. "Do you trust my hands?"  
"They are steady and sure," the human replies.   
"Good boy," the Pinfaced One says. He leaves, just for a moment, to get the tools to shear his pupil, prepare him for the final hurdle of the ritual.

* * *

He is lowered by those cold hands of his teacher and by the cold hands of the Open-Throated Woman and by the cold hands of the Chatterer of Bone and the Glutton of Bile into the porcelain tub of warm red wine. After all he's been through—the torture, the freezing, the burning, the shearing—the bath is like silk on scar tissue, a single cube of ice cast into a bonfire.   
But to come up from his bath with a lungful of air and to be embraced as one of them . . .?  
It moved The Nameless New to tears.  
He raises a hand to touch his face, wiping at the tears that stream down his cheeks. The tips of his fingers come away stained black.  
"Now," says the Open-Throated Woman, "you choose the vestments and the stigmata you will bear."  
He looks around at them. His eyes linger on his educator. There is no need for words.  
"The Nameless and New becomes The Lamb," the Pinfaced One announces.   
And the Lamb nods.  
The Open-Throated Woman takes The Lamb by the hand, lifting him out of the bath with the same strength his educator had, and leads him into her workshop.   
The Lamb's legs, up to the thigh, are bound in black leather boots that pervert his legs, walking as if on hooves, each step thick and heavy. He wobbles on them, like a newborn creature, having to pace a few times before his gait smooths out, graceful and even.  
Then he is dressed in an apron, wrapped waist-to-knee in a black leather apron, belts cinching and circling him until it feels as though he is being embraced by a lover.  
His chest is exposed, the golden rings through The Lamb's nipples catching the scant light, gleaming against his skin.  
The finale, something that brings a dry smile to the Open-Throated Woman's face, is the headpiece.   
The horns are fashioned out of heavy black metal, hollow but sturdy, wickedly sharp curves mocking a ram's horns. They're made to be bolted to The Lamb's skull, a sensation that makes him gasp as the Open-Throated Woman bolts them down. The weight of the horns force his head down, looking just as shy as before he was born into this new role.  
"He will be proud," she says. "You've become handsome."  
"I want all of you to be proud," The Lamb replies.  
The Open-Throated Woman laughs, a hissing sound. "You've already made us proud by existing."

* * *

The sight of the girl brings The Lamb to tears. He has not cried in ages and yet this girl, with her eyes so like his own sets him to silent weeping.  
"What have they done to you, daddy?" Kristy asks.  
The Lamb shakes his head. "I have no daughter. Not any more."  
"You're my dad, you can't just stay here."  
"I am your father no longer," The Lamb answers, pacing around her with heavy-hooved steps. "I have become new flesh, new sensations."  
"Daddy, please." She pulls the puzzle box from her pocket. "We can go back."  
The Lamb staggers away from her, as if burned again. "I cannot. I do not belong with you. I am not the man you loved." He points at the box. "Return home. I am content here."  
"Daddy!"  
The Lamb turns, stalking off into the dark. With each step, ink-black tears pour over his ashen skin, marring him. And yet he does not return to the girl, only retreats into the dark.


End file.
